


Come Hell or High Water

by Morosexuals_Anonymous



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: F/M, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, it's an oil spill and i don't sugar coat it but i promise it's not that graphic, merman au, suffering/dead animals mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27830503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morosexuals_Anonymous/pseuds/Morosexuals_Anonymous
Summary: You and your team from the RAD Aquatic Center are helping to clean the beach after a terrible oil spill leaves the nearby bay uninhabitable, when you stumble upon a rare creature in desperate need of attention.
Relationships: Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader
Kudos: 53





	Come Hell or High Water

At first you thought what you were looking at was a pile of trash washed up on the beach. It’s hard to tell what anything is when a thick layer of brown sludge coats everything on the coastline, it all blends together in a dreary foul smelling mess. Thank goodness you decided to take a closer look or you might have been too late.

This is one of the worst oil spills you have ever seen, and it’s all you can do to focus on your job to keep a lid on the anger boiling within you. There will be time to call out and fight the responsible parties later. At the moment, there is a lot of wildlife that needs immediate attention, and none more so than the limp body laying half out of the churning dirty water.

You realized it wasn’t trash when you saw an arm sticking out of the muck, and you gasped, thinking you’d found a dead human being. That wasn’t right, either, though, as you noticed the shape of a fish tail where the person’s legs should be, and the understanding of what exactly you’re looking at left you lightheaded.

Solomon must have seen you fall backwards onto your butt in shock, because he calls your name from further up the beach to check on you, but you can’t hear him over the surf and your pounding heartbeat. There is a real live (er, or possibly dead?) mermaid in front of you.

“Is everything alri….oh.” Soloman approaches when you don’t answer and stops next to you when he sees what you’re staring at. His eyes go wide for a second, before he quickly dawns a more serious expression. “Is it alive?”

“I-I don’t know…”

“Check its vitals.”

Your senior coworker wastes no time getting on his knees and rolling the creature onto its back. It takes you a second to blink away your disbelief and do as you’re told, feeling as if you’re in a dream. Is this seriously happening? How in the world did a mermaid get washed up on land?! They’re supposed to be deep water creatures. Nobody has ever seen one in person before, just a handful of glimpses of their shadowy figures caught on camera by ROVs in recent years, just enough to prove they are real and not much else. For one to be here on land, for the first time in documented history, is…this is _unreal!_

With shaky hands, you find the creature’s wrist and press two fingers there to try and find a pulse. It’s unnecessary, though, because when Solomon wipes away at the sticky slime on the sides of its chest, its diagonal gills pop open, and the most pitiful wheeze you’re ever heard seeps out of the creature’s parted lips.

“It’s alive!” you say, relief washing through you. Thank god humanity’s first encounter with this mythical being was not by killing it! Well, it’s probably too soon to tell that, because it’s still in pretty bad shape. “What do we do?”

“We’re going to take him back to RAD,” your boss says definitively. You’re amazed he’s able to stay so calm. “I’ll go pull the van up. Stay here, and don’t let anyone else know.”

He jogs off before you can question why. Perhaps he doesn’t want spectators and reporters to get in the way? You trust Solomon, and this is a pretty big deal, so you’re sure he has a good reason. Admittedly you think he can be kind of strange at times, but he’s a good person. He always puts the health and safety of the animals first above all else.

This, however…might not be strictly classified as an animal.

While you wait for him to return, you keep busy doing your best to help the mermaid with what you have. _Merman_ is probably more appropriate, actually, with the flat chest that rises and falls in strained shallow breaths, and when you wipe away at the oil on its face, his high cheekbones and angular jaw give it a masculine look. You’re pretty sure Solomon identified it as a he, too.

The crude leaves ugly streaks on his skin, but a deep tan color pokes through, and as you’re being careful with your cloth wiping around his eyes, one of them cracks open.

You’re not sure if he’s actually awake or not. The merman stays limp in your hold, his head in your lap to keep it off the grimy sand, hair plastered by thick muck to his forehead, and that glassy eye doesn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. It’s as blue as the sea. Or, as blue as the sea should be. That blue is the brightest speck of color under the overcast sky that you’ve seen all day.

As silently as it opened, his eye falls closed again, just as the large RAD mobile lab van comes down the beach to park a few feet away in the wet sand. Solomon jumps out of the driver’s seat, and Simeon is with him, too, who spares no more than a glance to the mythical creature as he opens the back doors painted with the aquatic center’s purple Capricorn logo.

“You two get the tail, I’ll get the upper body,” he says. Like Solomon, he seems a lot less surprised by the sight of the merman than you are.

Both of them are hasty to get him onto a stretcher, as if they know what they’re doing, leaving you to clumsily keep up while they lift the unconscious merman off the ground, already walking him into the van before you have the chance to say anything. The merman is carefully placed in the floor between the shelves of supplies and equipment, his tail is so long that it has to be curled off to the side to fit, and Simeon gets to work placing wet towels over his body to keep him from drying out.

“Try to flush as much oil out of the gills as you can.” Solomon orders. “Make sure he keeps breathing.”

Simeon nods. “I’ll do my best. Please drive carefully.”

Your boss closes the back doors, then gestures for you to get in the passenger side while he goes back to the driver’s seat. At this point you’re having a hard time shaking the feeling that something weird is going on, what with the way they’re handling this, as if they know exactly what to do. You confront him as he buckles up. “What are we doing?”

“We’re bringing him back to RAD for treatment,” he replies.

“Yeah, but…what’s with the way you’re acting? Shouldn’t we, like, call someone about this?”

Solomon doesn’t answer right away. He keeps his eyes forward as he carefully drives the truck inland, making sure not to pass too close to one of the many volunteer tents lining the beach. Simeon speaks from the back instead.

“You might as well tell her. I think she can be trusted.”

You peek through the little window that’s open behind you to see him pushing a tube into the open diagonal slats on the side of the merman’s ribs. The tube is connected to a large bag of saline, which Simeon squeezes by hand, and it pumps the clear liquid into the merman’s gills and spills back out stained a sickly color onto the floor. The merman twitches, but otherwise stays unconscious, which is good, because that cannot be pleasant.

Simeon glances up at you while he works and gives you a little grin. He’s known for his warm and disarming demeanor, but you’re still a bit unnerved by everything that’s happening. In the two years you’ve been working with them at the RAD Aquatic Center, you’ve never gotten the feeling that they were hiding something from you until now, and you really don’t like it.

“Tell me what?”

Solomon lets out a breath he’d been holding. The man seems conflicted as he looks at you from the side of his eye, but he finally chooses to agree with Simeon, if only because he has no choice. “…Alright. What I’m about to tell you is highly classified, got it? None of this leaves the lab.”

“About what?” Your heart is going to explode if you don’t get some answers right the fuck now. “Just tell me what’s going on! We found a _merman_! You know how big of a deal that is, don’t you?!”

“Yes, we do, because we’ve done this before,” Simeon answers when Solomon hesitates. “This isn’t the first merperson we’ve brought to RAD.”

“You…you WHAT?” You can’t believe this. “Solomon, is that true?”

“It’s true,” he nods. “It’s, ah…a bit of a long story.”

“It’s going to be a long drive,” you point out. Solomon is driving slowly so that the passengers in the back don’t get rattled too much. He can’t argue with that. “Start talking. How many merpeople have you seen, and why haven’t you told anyone?”

There have been entire million dollar expeditions by teams of biologists all over the world that have been trying to find one of the illusive mermaids since they were first officially documented in the last decade. For Solomon and Simeon, both esteemed members of the scientific community, to have encountered not just one, but _multiple_ mermaids, and to keep it to themselves, was just…it was insane!

“The first time I met one, I was a kid,” Solomon starts, seemingly unphased by your rising tone. “I was on vacation at this bay with my parents. I got caught in a riptide while I was swimming and was carried far out to sea, and I probably would have died, but then a mermaid showed up and brought me back to land.”

Oh, ok, that makes a little sense. Nobody probably would have believed a small child back then. But still, shouldn’t he have come forward with this information as soon as mermaids were proven real? It would be the first documented case of mermaids interacting with humans, and crucial evidence that they don’t always stay in deep water and might even come near land!

Solomon seems to read your mind. “I didn’t tell anyone because she asked me not to. People might try to catch her if they knew, and revealing their secret to the world is a pretty bad way to thank someone for saving your life. They’re not like any other fish, they’re intelligent creatures just like us, with families and homes to protect. They want to stay hidden, so we should respect that.”

Hearing this from your boss is surreal. The entire time you’ve known him, Solomon has always been married to his work. His complete lifelong dedication to the field is something you have always admired about him and one of the biggest reasons you’ve stayed to intern at RAD instead of pursuing other opportunities at more prestigious labs. He’s a brilliant man with an infectious thirst for knowledge, and you’re pretty sure you’ve learned more from him than the entire four years you spent in a university, so it surprises you to see him like this, not speaking as a scientists for once, but from the heart.

If he’s turning down an opportunity to contribute to the study if what is possibly one of the greatest discoveries in all of human history, then he must be really serious about it.

“That encounter is what got me into marine biology in the first place, and why I opened the center here. With how more and more dangerous the oceans are getting these days, I wanted to make a place that would be safe for her and any other merpeople who live in this area if something ever happened. Something like this.”

That makes sense. You feel a bit guilty you hadn’t thought of any of this before. You didn’t consider the merpeople’s wishes, just your own entitled curiosity. “So…what about you, Simeon? You said you’ve brought another merperson to RAD before. Did you find another one?”

“The first year RAD was open, Solomon found an injured merman hiding in a tidepool on the beach. He asked me to help bring him back to RAD for rehabilitation, and we managed to heal him up and release him back to the ocean in secret,” Simeon explains, then dawns a fond look as he switches the saline tube to his patient’s other set of gills. “He was a big guy. Really sweet when he warmed up to you, and as curious about us as we were of him.”

“I can’t believe you two managed to do that,” you say, shaking your head. “How do you keep a merman at the center without anyone noticing?”

“Very carefully,” Solomon replies. “Now, the question is, can we trust you to do the same? Or are you going to run to the news and get Mr. Slick back there a one way ticket to Seaworld? We can’t exactly stop you, but I want to make sure you know the consequences it’ll have for them. Once you open that pandora’s box, there’s no going back.”

You give it a moment of thought. As much as you want the fame and glory of having found a live merperson, you can’t shake the awful taste in your mouth such a thing would give you at said merperson’s expense, especially after hearing how Solomon and Simeon spoke about them. The nearly lifeless merman on the floor of the truck sends a pang of sympathy to your heart. Does he have friends and family? Could you live with yourself if he never saw them again?

“You can trust me,” you decide. You’ve always been a bleeding heart, so it wasn’t that hard to convince you. “I’ll help you. But on one condition!”

“What’s that?”

“You tell me everything you know about mermaids and let me study him while he’s with us.” Solomon gives you a suspicious look. You place a hand over your heart and look him in the eyes. “I swear I won’t tell anyone. The research is for personal use only. I just want to know more about them, I always have! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“Alright, fine,” Solomon relents, and the slightest smirk peeks from his lips. Simeon laughs behind you, as if he expected that. And he should! You are nothing if not passionate about your work, and Solomon can’t blame anyone but himself for always encouraging this side of you. “But I get a copy of all of your notes, too.”

“Deal.”

The two of you shake on it, and the three of you spend the rest of the car ride discussing the plan for when you get back to RAD. It shouldn’t be too hard to sneak the merman in through the back entrance, and nearly every member of the center is currently volunteering at the beach, so the building is practically empty.

You ask where the heck you guys can even hide him, and Solomon tells you not to worry, because he has his own secret lab made specifically for this kind of situation. You suppose if he built the place with merpeople in mind, then a secret room hidden somewhere in the building shouldn’t surprise you.

It does, however, surprise you to learn that the entrance to the secret room has been right under your nose this whole time. It’s in a janitor’s closet that you’ve passed countless times with no idea what lay beyond the false back wall that slides out of the way when Solomon unlocks it with a special key. You help him carry the merman inside and down a flight of stairs while Simeon is in the security room making sure no surveillance cameras catch you in the act of smuggling a rare priceless creature, and when your boss turns on the light, your jaw drops.

The secret room is _huge_. You were expecting a little hideaway, but no, the entire basement of the facility is one massive room with a rectangular tank taking up most of it, which is currently empty. There’s some crates in the corner and a computer monitor displaying a bird’s eye view of the hallway outside the janitor’s closet, and propped up against the wall is a plastic pink kiddie pool, which Solomon retrieves and has you place the merman’s top half inside.

His torso barely fits while his tail flops over the side onto the floor, and Solomon fetches a hose to start filling the pool. He directs you to a big bag of sea salt to stir in while it fills, and you watch in fascination as the creature’s gills flutter to life once they’re submerged, rhythmically pulsing in a pace just a little faster than a heartbeat. You want nothing more than to draw a diagram of the strange organs, but you restrain yourself for now to focus on the task at hand: cleaning the oil from his skin and scales.

Simeon comes in to help you get to work with dawn dish soap and washcloths while Solomon starts the process to fill the large tank. You can’t help but ask them a million questions while you work, mostly about physiology, from how long merpeople can stay out of the water to what they eat.

The whole time, you run your fingers over everything you can, giving particular attention to his tail and the velvety seam that connects smooth skin to glossy scales. And the _scales_ – wow, you are not prepared for the bright golden color just beneath the muck! Even in the dim fluorescent lighting of the underground room, they shimmer beneath your fingertips, ending in wide delicate fins that fan out large enough that you could wrap yourself in them like a blanket. This fish tale is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Breathtakingly beautiful, and it feels like it’s made of solid muscle, marred only by the occasional scar.

His top half, while appearing human-like at first glance, turns out to be just as eye catching. Removing the oil reveals pale markings running diagonal down his chest, parallel to his gills. The even lines almost look like they’re painted on, but they don’t come off with Simeon’s gentle scrubbing. Another surprise is how stark white his hair turns once the mud is lathered from his head, even more so than Solomon’s platinum blond, and the tiny ball earrings imbedded in his pointed ears. Gold, just like his tail.

When most of the oil has been scrubbed away, a lot of it ending up on you in the process, you take a moment to rest your arms from their hard work and take him in, completely in awe of the sight before you. Solomon says the last merman they brought here was similar, but different enough to suggest a wide variety of appearances in their species. Or maybe even multiple subspecies? There’s one thing you’re pretty sure you can say for certain, though: there’s nothing in the world quite like this incredible creature.

Your gawking ends when the merman begins to stir. It’s a good sign that he’s waking up on his own, but the big tank is going to take several more hours to fill up enough to submerge him, and probably several days to fill up completely, so none of you are quite sure what to do in the meantime. Obviously, you need to keep him calm, but that’s not going to be easy to do when he blearily opens his blue eyes, takes one look at the humans looming over him, and screams.

His voice is as hoarse as gravel and gives out halfway through, so you’re pretty sure the sound doesn’t carry outside the basement. Still, you quickly jump back and try to give him some space, but that doesn’t seem to help any as he flails most of the water out of the kiddie pool.

“Get away from me!” he croaks, and it nearly knocks you off your feet to hear him speak. You were told they could, but it’s still incredible!

“Easy, easy, you’re okay,” Solomon calmly tells the creature with his hands up. “You’re safe here.”

“Like hell I am! Where am I? What did you stupid humans do to me?!”

“You got caught in an oil spill,” Simeon says. “We found you on the beach and took you here to help you.”

“Where is here? Wh-where’s the water?” the poor thing’s head swivels around the room, trying to get a good look at his surroundings but having some obvious difficulty doing so. He’s squinting at everything like he’s being blinded by the sun, even though it’s quite dingy in the windowless basement, and fright starts to bleed through his anger. “Take me back!”

All three of you exchange glances at each other. You were hoping the others would know what to do, since they’ve apparently done this before, but both men are at a loss. “Uh…that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

The blood drains from the merman’s face, but he grits his teeth and holds his ground. His hands ball into fists and he tries to shout past the soreness in his throat. “What? No, you…you _fools_! I’m the Great Mammon! You _will_ let me go, or I’ll…I’ll…!” His threat trails off in frustration. He might be big and strong, and he has some pretty sharp looking teeth, but he’s clearly the one at a disadvantage here, barely able to see and sitting in a couple inches of water on a concrete floor. Your heart aches for him, knowing he must be terrified, and rightly so.

“Mammon, is it?” you try, nervously stooping down to get on his eye level. You hope making yourself smaller will make him more comfortable. “Hey, don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re seriously just trying to help.”

“Then take me back,” he demands.

You sadly must shake your head. “We can’t right now. They’re still cleaning up the oil, you’d just get covered in it all over again.”

“I don’t care, take me back! I have to-“ Mammon stops whatever he was going to say and bites his lip. His eyes flicker back and forth between all three humans, who have followed your lead and are kneeling, too.

“You’ll die if we take you back right now. Please let us help you, Mammon.” In a bold move, you slowly extend your arm to hold your hand out to him, palm facing up and posture relaxed. He flinches, glaring at it like he thinks you’re holding an invisible gun. “I understand why you might not like us, but I promise you’re safe here. We all want to send you back home as soon as we can, but we’ll need you to trust us, okay?”

Everything is quiet as everyone in the room goes still. Mammon opens his eyes as much as he can and stares at you, searching your face, skeptically analyzing everything he can see. You stay where you are, offering him an encouraging smile, careful not to make any sudden moves, and you all wait for his response.

Finally, his adam’s apple bobs slightly, and he moves. The merman lifts one hand and hesitantly inches closer, until the tips of his fingers reach yours. His nails are quite long and pointy, you notice. Almost like claws.

Suddenly, as fast as a barracuda, his hand shoots up to grab your wrist, and you don’t even have time to yelp before he has yanked you towards him hard enough to make you fall forward. He has one cold arm around your shoulders in an instant, roughly crushing you against his body while his other hand wraps around your neck, pressing his fingers against your jugular and making you feel the pin pricks of their points. They jab deeper when you struggle.

“Take me home,” Mammon growls venomously next to your ear, sending a chill down your spine, “Or I’ll kill her!”

“No, stop!” Simeon jumps to his feet. “Don’t hurt her!”

“Then you better do what I say, _humans_!” He spits that word like it tastes bad. “Or this little minnow is as good as chum!”

“Mammon, please, calm down,” Solomon fights to keep his cool, but you can see the panic in his eyes. “You don’t need to do that, let’s just talk-”

“I don’t talk to humans!” Mammon yells. “Take me home _right the fuck now_!”

His grip on your body is bruising, and you whimper as the pain turns sharp. You desperately try to pry him off, tears squeezing from your screwed shut eyes, but you can do nothing to budge him as the creature’s claws draw blood.

“Solomon!” Simeon sees it and shouts. “Oh my god, Solomon, do something!”

But he doesn’t have to. At the sound of that name, the claws slowly sinking into your throat halt. “Wait, what? Solomon?” Mammon looks at your boss with an incredulous look. “You’re Solomon? Like… _the_ Solomon?” Solomon quickly nods. The pressure around you loosens enough for you to suck in a shaky breath. “Oh! Why the hell didn’t ya say so?”

“I, uh, take it you know Diavolo?”

Just like that, Mammon lets you go. You scramble away from him and into Simeon’s arms, who pulls you up from the floor and holds you steady, which you greatly appreciate because you feel like you’re about to faint.

“Thank the lord! Are you okay?”

“I-I’m fine,” you lie. The merman could have killed you just then. Oh god, you could have died!

Mammon, on the other hand, finally relaxes. “Of course I know Diavolo,” he says, as if it should be obvious. “Everyone knows Diavolo, which means everyone knows _you_ , too.”

Solomon attempts a strained smile. “I see. Word spreads quick under the sea, eh?”

“Wh-who’s that?” you ask Simeon quietly. Whoever this Diavolo is, he might have just saved your life.

“He’s the first merman we found, the injured one from the tide pool.”

Oh. This is all starting to make sense now.

“So this is the famous place of healing he talked about,” Mammon says as he tries to look around the room again, this time with more curiosity. His gaze lands on your coworker, who still hasn’t let you go after that scare. “Are you Simeon, then?”

“I am.”

“Huh. Weird. Could’ve sworn he said there were only two humans who knew about us…”

He frowns suspiciously at you, which makes your stomach squeeze. “I-I’m new here,” you nervously explain. “I’m the one who, um, who found you, on the beach.”

Mammon opens his mouth to say something, but the words abruptly evaporate. He looks you over again, as if studying you. “…Ah,” is all he says.

Not even a thank you? Rude.

“Don’t worry, she has agreed to keep you a secret. I trust her with my life,” Solomon assures him.

Mammon scoffs and grumbles, “Easy for you to say when it’s not yours on the line.” The merman, his body sagging as the adrenaline wears off, closes his eyes and lays back down in his mostly empty kiddie pool. “Fine then, get to it, humans. Do your healing thing so I can get the hell out of here. How long is this gonna take, anyway? I’m a busy guy, can’t stay up here for too long or my brothers will think I’m dead and throw my stuff away.”

“It’s not so much a matter of when you’ll be ready as it is when the bay will be safe to return to. It was a big spill, so the cleanup could take some time.”

“How much time?”

“A couple weeks, at least. Maybe a month.”

“What? A MONTH?!” Mammon groans. “Auughhh, noooo!”

While the merman rolls over in impatient anguish, as if he hadn’t just almost killed you a minute ago, Simeon leads you out of the room and sits you down on the stairs. He gently dabs away the blood on your throat and asks you again if you’re alright, and after a couple deep breaths, you nod.

You are shaken, but yes, you think you’re okay. Mammon was just scared, you reason. You probably would have done the same if you felt like you were backed into a corner like that. It was dumb of you to get as close as you did, you were just so fascinated by him that you forgot your common sense, and you vow not to make the same mistake again.

“Was Diavolo aggressive like that?” you ask. Simeon hums.

“Not exactly, but it was a different situation with him. He’s the one who actually approached Solomon for help first.”

“Really? What made him do that?”

“Music,” he grins. “Solomon had gone to the beach to play his violin that day, and Diavolo was hiding nearby. He heard the music and couldn’t resist.”

That gets a little laugh out of you, which helps ease your frayed nerves. That’s a very Solomon thing to do. He often plays music in the presence of water, even taking his instrument to the aquarium every so often, claiming that it soothes the fish. He has absolutely no scientific backing for that theory, but if a little violin is enough to lure a merperson out of hiding, then perhaps there’s more to it than you thought. “Is that really all it took?”

“Yup. He said he could hear the good in Solomon’s heart, so he knew he could trust him.”

“Diavolo sounds like a funny guy.”

“He is. So if he’s friends with Mammon, then I can only hope that Mammon might not be too bad, either.” Simeon’s smile falters and he shoots a glance back towards the kiddie pool where Solomon is refilling it with a hose, albeit from a safe distance. “I hope.”

He applies a bandage and checks for any more injuries, but there’s nothing he can do about the bruise starting to bloom on your neck. You’ll have to wear concealer if you don’t want anyone asking questions. He tells you that you’ve done more than enough already and that if you don’t want any part in this, then you can leave the rest up to them, but you shake your head and reaffirm that you’re not about to let an opportunity like this go just because of one little life or death scare. You’re a tough girl, you can take a little danger, especially if it’s for the sake of some invaluable data.

Still, as you drive home that night, you can’t help but shudder at what could have happened if Mammon hadn’t recognized Solomon in time.


End file.
